Pandora to be installed in 60% of new vehicles in 2015

A new partnership between radio streaming service Pandora and motor company Ford Australia will place its app in to 60% of all new cars in Australia in 2015.

Rick Gleave, director of business development, Pandora ANZ, said the partnership puts Pandora as the most enabled streaming service now available in Australian vehicles.

“By partnering with Ford, an innovator for in-car connectivity technologies, we continue to extend our reach to capture what we describe as the ‘ear balls’ of Australians,” said Gleave.

The app will be built in to the dashboard of Ford models like Fiesta ST, Focus ST and Ford Kuga from today, and by early next year will come part and parcel in Ford’s Ranger and Transit models.

Australian users who aren’t signed up to Pandora’s subscription model will eventually be the target of advertising audio specific to Australian drivers, something Pandora already does in its major territory, the US.

“We don’t have the scale to do that here just yet but we are very much following in our counterparts in Oakland’s footsteps in being able to target messages to cars,” Jane Huxley, Managing Director, Pandora ANZ told AdNews.

Part of Ford’s voice-activated SYNC AppLink technology, Pandora can lock the driver’s device and respond to voice and steering wheel commands.

The partnership follows the release of Commercial Radio Australia’s 2014 Digital Radio Report in August, where it found digital radio listening is the highest it’s been in five years. The reports for the five metropolitan capital cities showed the number of vehicle brands with DAB+ digital radio doubled in Australia since 2013, when only eight manufacturers supported the service. In the last financial year 97,177 new vehicles had been sold with a DAB+ digital radio.

AdNews has also reported Pandora has agreements with Holden and Mazda for its in-car technology and currently features on new model Nissans.